As the amount of information escalates on the Internet and other available sources, there is an increasing need to be able to improve the quality and relevancy of search results that are accomplished in any information-need situation. Resulting documents and data returned through the use of widely available search engines often number in the thousands or more. At the same time, research shows that users most often take their “answers” or desired data from the top 10 documents returned from any search activity. It is therefore clear that the ability to return the most relevant data to any search query situation is an important goal, and is likely only to become more important as the amount of information available grows.
Searching and finding relevant information is one portion of an overall problem-solving process. Problem solving skills and knowledge construction—especially in information intensive settings—have been identified by scholars, teachers and business leaders as critical to succeeding in the world today. As such, skilled searching contributes to developing understanding of the relevant scope and boundaries, as well as depth and detail, relevant to a particular problem. Teachers and schools incorporate the teaching of search within inquiry based projects to coach and instruct students in information gathering, sorting, and analysis. Effective search requires skills and techniques to define and refine the topic or topics or questions being sought, identify relevant information and knowledge, seek and find linkages and relate information and knowledge appropriately in the context of the problem at hand, and to sort through and select the most relevant knowledge or information.
It is clear that a major determinant of the quality and relevancy of the information returned in any search is determined by the search or query entered or provided that is used to initiate or formulate any search activity. Individuals who are more experienced in trying to form understanding or solve problems using vast amounts of information (and often text) are better and faster at providing on-target search terms in their search activities, and better at evaluating and sifting through and formulating any search results for use.
Some of these individuals' expertise may come from some portion of domain-specific knowledge, which allows them to formulate search queries using more appropriate terms or questions. However, other and powerful expertise comes from the experience individuals develop in solving problems and developing understanding utilizing many and disparate sources of information as a set of skills in and of themselves. Those with greater problem solving experience in unstructured or information-rich situations are generally much better and much faster than less experienced people at identifying information needs within their project, translating their evaluation of their currently held set of information and desired further information into specific needs, and in formulating search phrases, terms or arguments that appropriately represent their information needs.
One of the approaches being focused upon by search providers includes the improvement of the ranking algorithms and approaches used to rank and present search results to users. Various ranking improvements are being used or proposed, such as human-edited document mapping and rating, hierarchical categories for document classification, existing hyperlink analysis and others. While these approaches improve the ranking of search results over non or minimally ranked searches, additional improvements are still very much needed. In particular, approaches that improve the relevancy and quality of the search results with respect to the specific user in their specific problem solving circumstance are of particular importance.
Another reason that experienced problem solvers are better at producing search results is that they are generally better at and more comfortable with handling the iterative, development process of moving from defining a problem or question through finding relevant information, constructing knowledge and meaning from that information, and producing a coherent result for such an “inquiry based project.” Such experienced problem solvers are generally comfortable and fluent at deciding what information they need, how to proceed, what additional searches would be useful to pursue, how to evaluate intermediate search results, and how to filter and integrate search results for their use in a meaningful way. They are also comfortable at identifying a need for new or additional information at one point in time and acting on that need through conducting a search at a different point of time. One of the enabling factors for experienced problem solvers and searchers is that they are comfortable managing the development of understanding or meaning for a problem or topic that most often has multiple parts to it. Because many if not most information intensive projects include more than a single simple question (and often include many facets of a project), experienced problem solvers are also generally comfortable and adept at managing through an iterative process of developing meaning or understanding utilizing vast amounts of information—and utilizing multiple searches for information, which may be related to one another through their thinking about the project in various ways. Experienced problem solvers are comfortable with conducting multiple searches within their own implied project (and usually mental and nonexplicit) project framework that relates all of the aspects of their project together.
Inexperienced problem solvers struggle with many aspects that contribute finally to a high quality search result. They struggle with identifying when there is a need for more information, how best to formulate that need, how to codify that need into a search statement of some kind, and how to filter and integrate the results of searches into the various aspects of their project.
There is therefore a need for improved methods and systems that are modeled on experienced or expert problem solvers and that assist less experienced searchers with defining appropriate and useful search arguments, filtering the results, and formatting and integrating the results into their project. There is further need for improved systems and methods which accommodate the realities of the complexity of working on information intensive projects, for example in that most projects or extended information seeking involve multiple and related searches. Improved search-related methods and systems not only assist less experienced searchers/problem solvers, but improve the productivity and quality achieved by experienced searchers/problem solvers as well.